The Sounds of American English is a phonetics website run by the University of Iowa. On the website, you can see pictures, videos, and animated diagrams of how to pronounce each of the sounds of American English.

Ship or Sheep is a simple website designed to help you practice minimal pairs, which are pairs of sounds that are very similar to each other. For example, ‘t’ and ‘d’ are very similar to each other. They are only different in one way: ‘t’ is voiceless and ‘d’ is voiced.

Rachel’s English is a popular YouTube channel focused on English language learning. It is especially well known for its pronunciation videos. You can see a list of video topics here. For example, there is a set of videos all about the flap ‘t’, which is the small, short ‘d’ sound Americans pronounce in the middle of words like “water” and “butter.”

I hope you enjoy these resources! There are hundreds of other websites, podcasts, YouTube channels, and so on which focus on English pronunciation, so let me know in the comments what you favorites are!

Hello! This week’s ESL resources are two good online listening practice websites for ESL students. In the ELI, we all know about TED.com, which has thousands of short lectures. TED is great, but it isn’t specifically designed for ESL students. Here are two websites that are!

Voice of America Learning English

Voice of America Learning English is a free news website funded by the US government. Its stories are designed for English language learners and include resources such as vocabulary lists. The website even includes a built-in dictionary (click on a word to see a short definition).

In addition to the news stories, VoA Learning English also has series of content focused on the English language. Check these out, for example:

Over the years, many Quizlet sets have been created by ELI teachers. See them below!

Not every Quizlet set listed below is relevant for every semester. For example, in one semester, we might teach the odd chapters of a book (1, 3, 5, etc), and in the next, we might teach the even chapters (2, 4, 6, etc). However, in the list below, you can often find all chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

If you have questions about which Quizlet sets relate to your current ELI curriculum, you can ask your teacher.

As its name suggests, typing.com is a website which helps you learn how to type properly on a US English keyboard. The website is free, and it offers a few dozen sequential tutorials that guide you from the most basic beginner-level practice (F, J, and Space) up to advanced-level full-keyboard speed and accuracy drills. Students can create accounts to track their progress and earn achievement badges.

Typing is an important skill for ESL/EFL students due to the amount of typed work they may be expected to produce in classes as well as their later careers. It’s also a necessary skill to enable students to confidently tackle standardized exams (such as the TOEFL and GRE) which require that students type original compositions under time pressure.